Is that your video game ringing?

Cell-phone handsets may soon double as video screens or home-appliance controllers thanks to third-generation wireless technology. Edited by Leland E. Teschler Flipping down the dialpad of the Kyocera Smartphone reveals features that emulate a Palm VII. It can view special Web sites designed for Wireless Application Protocol phones. It works with data service from a CDMA wireless carrier such as Sprint or Verizon. A Unigraphics CAD system helped industrial designers at Innodesign in Palo Alto, Calif., create the TouchPoint 3000, a handset made by LG Electronics in Korea and marketed by Sprint. The design conceals a proprietary PDA use interface beneath the keypad and LCD. on your next cell phone? Or perhaps using it to blast your way out of a skirmish in an online game of Quake? These are possibilities if wireless phones become platforms for games, streaming media, and other PC-style applications. It's not clear that there will ever be much of a demand for cell phones able to handle such seem-ingly exotic uses. Nevertheless, that hasn't stopped telecom sup-pliers from doing the groundwork necessary to make such developments possible. Planning is well underway for what are called third-generation (3G for short) cell phones. The 3G phones are envisioned as part phone, part PDA (personal digital assistant), and part video-player on demand. A hint of these capabilities is due to soon arrive in the form of Samsung's MPEG-4 Video Phone and Nokia's 9210 Color Communicator, both powered by a special chip from Emblaze Systems Ltd. in Israel. The screen on the Samsung device is said to have 16 million-color display capability and 1 million-pixel resolution, and will allow viewing video at 15 frames/sec. It is currently operational in Korea over a 3G wireless network and is slated for U.S. debut later this year. The Nokia device is expected to